


Lamentations in the Eerie Trees

by Corycides



Series: 100 Fics in 100 Days [44]
Category: Revolution (TV)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Fantasy, Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-03-21
Updated: 2013-03-21
Packaged: 2017-12-05 23:10:50
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,442
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/728971
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Corycides/pseuds/Corycides
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Char had always been different - weaker, smaller, un-winged - but her foster-mother had always said it made her special. Now she was going to have to find out if that was true.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Lamentations in the Eerie Trees

She wasn't like the others.

It was the first thing that Char could remember knowing, and the most important. They were strong, fast and hardy, and, most of all, they could fly. Now they were dead, in puddles of blood and torn feathers. Bony faces and icy, predatory eyes gone dull and empty as their spirits escaped on their final breath.

Kaw who had always been kind, keeping a honey-cake safe from the ravening flock of fledglings just for Char, huddled around his mate. The protective arch of his wings a ruin of snapped bones and gelid flesh. A few steps away Mael, only a few fledgings older than Char and who'd she'd hated with a child's fierce grudge for unjust wrongs, had fallen with blood on his claws. His hands had been hacked from his wrists and thrown into his lap.

After he was dead. After. She had to believe that.

Wet leaked from Char's eyes as she stumbled through the killing-field. Another difference. Another weakness. Goblin-kin didn't weep. Humans wept, but only for themselves. She wiped the tears away on her forearm, sniffing back snot, and broke into a run.

Gie would have stayed at the nursery to protect the fledglings. She had. She was still there. Char dropped to her knees beside her foster-mother, keening in her weak voice and preening blood from the priest-crest of pale feathers with her short, blunt talons. No goblin-kin would have lifted a weapon to one of Gie's caste. It was beyond forbidden. Humans had done this, broken the treaty and crossed the border to slaughter her people. It would be war now, but that seemed distant and unreal.

'I'm sorry, I'm sorry,' Char chanted, pulling Gie's thin, bony body into her lap. She buried her head in her shoulder, breathing in the nest-scent from the fine features at her nape. 'I should have been here; I should have gone with you.'

There was no breath in Gie's long, feathery body. She was a ruin. Yet words scraped and squirmed in her chest, clawing their way up her throat.

'Little bird, you have to live. You have to learn why you're special,' Gie whispered.

Horror made Char flinch back. She pressed her fingers to Gie's split, bloody lips as if she could stop the words like stones. They were cold. 'Shush, Ma, shush. Save your breath for your spirit.'

Too late for that. There was nothing of Gie here, just the words she'd left for Char.

'They took Da'an,' Gie said. Her voice broke in memory. Da'an had been the only child from her nest, and always sickly. Even weaker than Char, for all he had wings.

'I'll get him back,' Char promised. She hoped that Gie had known she would say that, perhaps it would have given her comfort. 'I promise.'

'There's a man who will help you,' Gie said. Her voice was fading in her throat. Char had to curl around her, ear pressed to her bloody chest, to hear the last. 'In Ajon. His name is Mathes, and he owes a debt.'

The last word was said and Gie was gone. Not just dead, but spent. Her spirit was gone, not carried away on the wind with the rest of the flock. What would they do without her? Even dead they would need a priest, wouldn't they?

Char wept her weakness out into Gie's feathers, washing the tawny pinions clean of blood. Once it was all gone, and the sun had set and the carrion birds waited politely in the trees, she got creakily to her feet. She dragged Gie out of the Nursery and into the open, laying her out on the stones of the god-ground. Her spirit was lost to their kin, but her wisdom could live on in the birds that ate her.

They were no words to say, no rites to perform. Yet Char still lingers, anchored by an aching sense of something undone. In the end she looked up into the trees, catching the beady eye of a great, caped vulture. 'You are honoured to eat Gie's wisdom,' she said. 'Fight for her heart. It was a good heart.'

She left them to it, some reservoir of fresh tears squeezing down her cheeks. Char scrubbed the away impatiently. Ajon was a far from here, and human held. Why any rook would make his home there was beyond Char, but if she was to get his help in time to free Da'an she had already wasted too much time.

There was a map of the continent that Gie kept in a chest in storage, an old faded thing in a tin case. Char had found it once when she was little. She and Da'an had spent hours poring over it, plotting out their adventure. It was the first time that Char could remember Gie ever getting angry, her crest bristling like she sat in judgement at the Drop as she slapped their hands and told them it was old and precious and didn't belong to them.

There was no one else for it to belong to now, Char supposed. At least she'd know if she was heading in roughly the right direction.

  
  


Human cities smelt like a rookery in mating season, and was more crowded. There was always a body close enough to touch. And she was not even in the city proper yet, just at its gates. Char pulled her hat down over the unfledged fluff of her crest and dropped her chin so no one could see her betraying eyes, shuffling closer to the gates with the rest of the crowd.

'Business in Agon?' the bony, bored looking guard said every few minutes, holding out his hand.

Some people he took papers from, others money. The people who gave him paper got it back, the money they didn't. He showed no more interest in Char as she stepped forwards than he had in anyone else, and she relaxed a little, shoulders unhunching.

'Business in Agon?'

'I am here to collect a debt,' Char said. She pulled her shirt down over her fingers. Her talons had always seemed puny compared to the rest of the Flock, but the guard had none at all. 'From a Mathes.'

That made him pay attention, bloody shot brown eyes snapping to her face, and he gave her the gold chits back. For a second Char thought he was going to throw her out, but he gave her directions instead. They sounded simple in the comparative sanity at the gate, but once inside the city walls Char was over-whelmed. There were people everywhere: bumping shoulders and elbows as if they were still sharing a nest; at stalls frying grain and slabs of salted bacon that made Char's meat-starved stomach growl and bartering with each other for strips of cloth and twists of powders that made Char's nose itch from across the street.

People she called them, but they were mostly human. She saw a few goblin-kin here and there – a squat knocker working iron over a glowing forge down an alley way, an arachne leaning out of a curtained wagon to wink ruby red eyes and flash one glossy black breast. For a gold chit you could go into the tent apparently. There was a surprisingly long queue, considering the arachne's fondness for taking their cut of any deal in a mouthful of sweet flesh. Everyone else was human – although only a few of them were fat or stank of sweet-poppy as Gie had described them.

Char had to stop and ask directions twice more before she finally found herself at Mathes' Grand Tavern. She went over to the counter and waited to catch the scruffy barman's attention. He finally glanced at her, brown eyes flickering from her hat to her torn, grubby cuffs.

'I've no need for staff,' he said, flicking a rag at her. 'So either get out or buy a drink.'

'Water,' Char said.

He poured her a glass of something that might have passed as an ale once. 'What do you want?'

'I'm looking for a rook called Mathes,' Char said. 'I think he works here?'

The barman stared at her long enough that she wondered if the men at the gate had been mocking her. Suddenly he reached over the bar and grabbed her chin, tilting her head back so he could see her eyes. Whatever he saw there made him grimace.

'I'm Mathes,' he said. Char stared at him, so shocked at the idea of going to a human for help that she didn't even try to hide her dismay. His mouth twitched. 'Underwhelmed?'


End file.
